With the last shred of its once formidable mystique crisply folded in Rick Rubin's wallet, Black Sabbath is going to try again to remind people that the band used to be, you know, kind of spooky. And what better way to do so than become a Universal Studios haunted attraction?
As announced this week, Universal Studios' California theme park will feature a Sabbath-based maze as part of its Halloween Horror Nights event, starting September 20. The maze will incorporate 3-D video as well as "horrifying graveyards," "disturbing madhouses," "bubbling pools of 'radioactive water,'" "Lucifer and his bride" (no comment from Sharon Osbourne), and "bone-chilling battlefields"—the last element presumably included because no night of Halloween thrills would be complete without triggering PTSD.
Naturally, lots of Sabbath classics will be played "at high volume," just in case anyone misses the point. No word yet if a zombie Ronnie James Dio will pop up to slay animatronic dragons with a broadsword. Or if gummy bat heads will be handed out to the kiddies. Or if the mostly terrifying image in Sabbath's history will be recreated for fans: an obese Bill Ward, swollen to gargantuan proportions and threatening to roll blob-like over the rest of Black Sabbath that spurned him, perhaps even making the band seem scary again.